SOURCE: "Introduction," in In Ole Virginia; or, Marse Chan, and Other Stories by Thomas Nelson Page, University of North Carolina Press, 1969, pp. ix-xxxvi.

King argues that Page's development of the Southern plantation tradition presents a contradiction between intent and outcome; his panegyrics of the antebellum South inadvertently reveal the fatal weaknesses of the plantation system.

The appearance in 1887 of Thomas Nelson Page's first collection of short stories, In Ole Virginia; or, Marse Chan and Other Stories, marked a new era in the plantation literary tradition. . . .

While Page was the most effective author to extol the virtues of the Old South, a plantation tradition had flourished for decades before the young Virginia lawyer began to write. Page merely surpassed his predecessors in enhancing the image. The success of In Ole Virginia and the acceptance of Page's work by popular national magazines such as Scribner's Monthly was part of the...